I do not advocate the use of uncooked grain, but I wish to correct a popular error in regard to the digestibility of uncooked cereal starch. Nearly all works on physiology and diet make the statement without reserve that raw starch is indigestible. This theory has been established by putting samples of cooked and uncooked starch into two test tubes, and treating them with some digestive enzym. The cooked starch, being soluble, is all exposed to the digestive enzyms at one time, and started on its way through the numerous changes in the complex chemical process of changing starch into glucose, while in the sample of uncooked starch, the digestive enzym attacks the particles from the outside, and slowly digests or eats off the exterior of the starch grains. After a given length of time the chemist adds iodin to the two test tubes. With starch, iodin gives a blue color. In the test tube containing the cooked starch, all of which has undergone a certain amount of digestion, no blue color is discerned, for no pure starch is left, while in the other tube, in which some of the particles remain unchanged, owing to the fact that Nature does all her work slowly, a blue reaction is of course obtained, and the chemist proclaims that uncooked starch is indigestible. [Sidenote: Government experiments with cooked and uncooked grains] At one of the United States Experiment Stations in the state of Kansas, a comparison of two diets, consisting chiefly of several varieties of grains, was recently made. The diets were alike in every respect with the exception that in one instance all the grains were boiled for two hours, while in the other case they were taken in an uncooked state. In the case of the uncooked grains, no starch whatever passed through the body in an undigested form. In the case of the cooked grains, the same results were found; that is, no starch was found in the intestinal residue. Other substances, however, remaining undigested in the cooked diet, were much in excess of that in the uncooked, yet no starch was present. In the case of cooked grains, the digestive processes may start with more rapidity than in uncooked grains, yet they are not thoroughly completed, and various decomposition products occur, as well as undigested proteid, which is not likely to occur with foods taken in their natural state. [Sidenote: Uncooked starch harmless] Moreover, if uncooked starch be taken in excess of the digestive capacity, and passed through the body wholly unchanged, no harm results. The starch grain, in its unchanged state, is a fine, white glistening granule, and its presence in the digestive tract would have no harmful effect upon the body functions. Without solution, no material can have any effect upon the physiological processes, except by irritating the mucous surfaces of the digestive organs; in the latter respect, starch granules are harmless. [Sidenote: Condition in which food should enter digestive organs]